THE ARTS
It has been a fantastic start to the year for The Arts. Our students and staff are well rested after the break and can’t wait to create some amazing artworks and performances this year. This year we welcome Megan Furphy, Paige Carr, Jacob Ellum, Kailey Scott, Michael Jones and Bradley Blair to the faculty.
In Year 7 and 8 Performing Arts, students have started with drama this term. Year 7 have been exploring energy and focus, as well as looking at expressive skills of voice, facial expression, gesture, and movement. Year 8 have been reacquainting themselves with drama, developing an awareness of vocal delivery, projection, and intonation.
In the Visual Arts, the Year 7 Art students are being introduced to the art elements and principles as a precursor to analysing artworks. They have also been learning basic drawing techniques relevant to observational drawing. In Year 10 Art students have experimented with Impressionist techniques such as sketching ‘En-plein air’ (outdoors) and have completed tonal painting tasks to learn how to find the dips and falls in tonal variation. Students used short deliberate brushstrokes and painted over their school photographs emulating Impressionist styles. In VCD, Year 8s are working on creating book cover designs for the Year 7 novel “things a map won’t show you”. They are generating original cover ideas from their annotated research imagery. The Year 9 and 10 VCD students are working on their communication design skills: generating a fully developed client brief and developing an original illustration in response to this brief.
A brand new subject for this year is Year 9 Artech. Students have experimented applying the elements and principles of Art through hand tracing and expressing their own unique ideas about how to represent each element or principle within their hand. Students have engaged in their first Art analysis, writing with passion and elevating their vocabularies through the use of new descriptive words. Students will soon begin lino printing and have the opportunity to apply their new knowledge to produce dynamic and exciting compositions.
Our Year 10 students in Studio Arts have begun their first CAT which is based on the art movement ‘Surrealism’. They have also been introduced to observational drawing and the skills required to achieve a representational likeness. The Year 10 Photography students are getting to know their camera settings and engaging with photographic techniques such as Camera angles, Framing and fast shutter speed. Our Year 10 Media students began the semester by completing their first filmmaking challenge: The Timetable. Students were tasked with planning, filming and editing together a short sequence all in under one hour. They all did such a fantastic job. We can’t wait to see what else they create this semester.
In VCE, Year 11 and Year 12 Art Making & Exhibiting students have been researching artists for inspiration & experimenting with materials and techniques of their choice. Year 11 Creative Practice students have been introduced to Ancient art and are completing a contemporary self portrait appropriating the styles and techniques used from the ancient era. We have engaged with intaglio printing techniques using recycled tetra paks as an environmentally conscious printing plate. Over in Media, Year 11 students are analysing the film Spiderman: Into the Spider Verse looking at representations in Media while learning about Technical Codes and Narrative Conventions. Our Year 12 Media students are exploring how feminism is conveyed in the films, Aliens and Black Widow. In VCD Year 11 students are developing their industrial design concepts for SAC 1, exploring different textures, shapes and materials, and are starting to explore 3d design using isometric drawing. Year 12 VCD students are developing outdoor pavilions as part of their environmental design folio. These pavilions will be displayed as floor plan drawings, elevations and planometric projections.
THE ARTS INSTAGRAM WORK
Be sure to check out the College’s Instagram page which showcases amazing work produced by our students in The Arts at?https://www.instagram.com/mooroolbarkcollegeofficial/.
Matthew Neil-Holland
THE ARTS KEY LEARNING HEAD